Beer is awesome! In order to have beer on tap at
my house at all times I built a kegerator. Unfortunately the first keg
(which holds about 165 12oz. beers) only lasted a little over 2 weeks!

I built mine with new parts.
Check out my partner below for a huge selection of pre-made kegerators and
parts for building your own:

Here's what you'll need to
build your own + what it cost me:

CO2 cylinder: ($80) I bought a 10lb. CO2 cylinder because
has it has enough CO2 for about 10 kegs and is much easier to carry around
for when I take the setup (sans fridge!) to friend's parties. It only costs
$7 to get a refill at welding supply stores.

Dual Gauge Regulator: ($60) A single gauge regulator
only shows you the pressure on the regulated (output) side of the regulator
while a dual gauge shows you the pressure inside the CO2 cylinder so you
can see when it is about to run out of CO2, although you still don't get
much warning.

CO2 tap: ($40) This connects to the bunghole of the keg to
pressure it and to allow beer to be drawn out. There are many different
types depending on the type of kegs you're going to use but most American
beers along with most imports use the same type of tap.

Faucet: ($25) This is the part on the outside of the fridge
that you actually draw the beer from. Look for one with a stainless steel
lever inside it and polished ball for smoother action.

Shank: ($15) This is just a threaded metal bar which attaches
to the faucet and actually goes through the door of the fridge. On the
opposite of the faucet end you connect the beer line from the keg using
a nipple if the shank doesn't come with one.

Tubing & Hardware: ($20) You'll need tubing to connect
the output of the regulator to the keg and beer output of the keg to the
shank. Get 4 feet of thin tubing (3/16") for the line between the keg and
the shank to drop the pressure so that the beer doesn't foam excessively.
I don't know why beer or food grade tubing with their thicker walls seem
to foam less than the generic stuff at a hardware store. You'll want
to run about 15psi of pressure into the keg to keep the beer carbonated
but you only want the faucet pressure to be about 3-4 psi to prevent foaming.
Using several feet of thin tubing drops the pressure appropriately.
The air line I used is 1/4", you don't want a lot of pressure drop here
so that the output gauge on the regulator is close to what the actual keg
pressure is.

I've found that different beers work better with different
pressures and temperatures. Most light beers work best with the temperature
cold (30F) and the pressure fairly high (18psi) while darker beers are
better around 45F and 12psi. Experiment and find what works best
for your tastes.

Used or new refrigerator or freezer: (varies, $90 for the
used fridge, $250 for the new chest freezer) It's nicer but a little harder
to find a single door fridge. Just make sure the one you get is big enough
to hold everything. Some people recommend keeping the CO2 cylinder outside
the fridge and drilling a hole to run the tubing inside to protect the
regulator but I don't know if that's really necessary or not since I've
received varying opinions on it. One nice thing about a double door (top/bottom)
fridge is that you can keep your frosty mugs in the freezer section.
I spent about $250 for a new chest freezer on the new kegerator since I
wanted the added space a chest freezer gives me.

If you get a freezer you'll need to convert it to a fridge. There
are 2 ways to do this. First you can replace the thermostat with
the thermostat from a fridge. The thermostat just shorts its 2 connections
together when the unit needs to cool. It's a simple replacement.
The other choice is an external thermostat. You plug your freezer
into the external thermostat and plug the thermostat into the wall.
This is slightly easier but you need to find a way to get the bulb for
the thermostat inside the freezer. Refridgerator thermostats run
about $30 and external thermostats are about $50. Follow the link
at the bottom of
this page to buy one.

This is the latest kegerator. I converted this
chest freezer to just refridgerate with a new thermostat. It holds
2 commercial kegs of beer and has room for 2 soda kegs of homebrew (hence
the 4 faucets). Unfortunately I now have the drain just running into
a bucket inside but it's not hard to maintain.Here's the inside of the new kegerator. The home
soda kegs fit in front of the commercial kegs.

Here's the inside of my old kegerator. I had to use that
big coil thermostat because this was originally a freezer and I had to
convert it to a refrigerator.

It was in my utility room next to my washing machine.
The nice thing about having it here is that I can run the drain to the
washing machine drain.This was the inside with a 5 gallon soda keg added to
hold my homebrew.

One last thing, you can buy a little plastic picnic faucet
for about $4 and this will allow you to use your setup anywhere you want.
You just disconnect the tubing where it connects to the shank (behind the
faucet) and attach the picnic faucet. Now you can take the CO2 cylinder,
tap, and picnic faucet to keg parties and use them there. Feel free to
email
me if you have any questions.

I built mine with new parts.
Check out my partner below for a huge selection of pre-made kegerators and
parts for building your own: